Overkill

which, only the south bank ones opened onto the seventh floor, where the district attorney’s offices were. But when he pressed the button, no little orange light came on. He figured maybe the bulb had burned out, but when he tried the button on the other side of the bank, the same thing happened.

They waited five or six minutes, elevatorless.

“You up for walking?” he asked her.

“Okay,” she said. “But no funny stuff. I’ve heard about you and stairwells.”

He smiled as much as he could, which wasn’t much. But when he tried the doorknob to the first set of stairs, he found it locked. As he did with the second set. “Welcome to post-9/11 security,” he said. “I guess they lock these things up at night now.”

“So we’re stranded?”

“Nah,” he said. “Got your cell phone?”

“It’s in my office.”

“Great.”

“How about yours?”

“Don’t own one.” It was the truth, a lawyer without a cell phone. But Jaywalker was a dinosaur among lawyers, a throwback to the Jurassic era, and he was determined to go to his grave without ever having had one of the damned things.

Then he got an idea. “Follow me,” he said, and started walking back to the north end of the corridor.

Darcy hesitated. Some part of her must have sensed that following Jaywalker was right up there with falling in line behind a column of lemmings. But follow she did, though at a distance.

Down at the end of the hall was a door. It, too, was locked, as Jaywalker had fully expected. He reached into his jacket pocket. He might not have a cell phone, but he did have a wallet. There was no money in it- that he carried folded in his back pocket and secured against jostlers by a thick rubber band-but he did have plastic. He found his get-out-of-jail card, more officially known as a New York City Department of Corrections Attorney Identification. It took him ten seconds to slip the lock with it. Back in his DEA days, it would have been less than five.

“What’s in here?” Darcy asked.

“Judges’ chambers. And,” he added, turning on the lights and rounding a corner, “voila! Their private elevator.” He pressed the button, and within half a minute an empty elevator opened in front of their eyes and beckoned them aboard. It was much smaller than the building’s regular ones, and much nicer. Instead of graffiti-resistant brushed metal walls, this one was paneled in what looked to be real wood. In place of industrial flooring, it sported red carpeting. A bit faded and worn, to be sure, but red carpeting nonetheless. And where the building’s other elevators were illuminated by harsh fluorescent bulbs glaring down through low-hanging plastic grids, this one was bathed in soft tones from invisible fixtures recessed into a ceiling a good ten feet above their heads.

“So this is how the other half lives,” said Darcy, stepping in gingerly, not unlike the way Cinderella must have mounted the steps to the coach that was to take her to the ball.

“This, a black robe and a gavel,” said Jaywalker. “Not to mention a special ticket-proof license plate.” He followed her on and pressed One. The door closed, and they began descending silently.

“Well,” said Darcy, “I want to thank you for getting us out of here. And I’ll see you in the morning.”

Jaywalker looked at his watch. “It is morning,” he announced, noticing that it was actually a minute past midnight.

But evidently Jaywalker’s watch was a minute fast. Or perhaps it was a matter of the elevator’s automatic timing mechanism being a minute slow. Whichever was the case, the result was indisputable. Only seconds into their descent, the lights above them flickered once and went off, leaving them in absolute blackness as they gently slowed to a complete stop.

24

NICE SHOES, YOUR HONOR

“You did that,” were the first words out of Katherine Darcy’s mouth.

“I’d love to take the credit for it,” said Jaywalker. “But I’m not half that clever.” He explained that the thing must have been on some sort of timer, and that it seemed to have been their bad luck to discover that the hard way.

“Don’t the night-court judges use this elevator?” Darcy asked. Or at least her voice asked. It was an eerie feeling, talking with somebody in such complete blackness. Sure, Jaywalker had had his share of conversations in the dark and then some. But not this kind of dark. Not absolute, utter, unrelenting darkness. It was spooky, is what it was.

“Don’t they?” Darcy’s voice was asking.

“Don’t they what?”

“Use this elevator? The judges who work night court?”

“Yeah,” said Jaywalker. “But they have special keys to override the system. Like the fire department.”

“Still-”

“What’s tonight?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Darcy. “Get-Stranded-in-the-Elevator Night?”

“No, what night of the week?”

“Monday,” she said. “Or at least it was until you proclaimed it morning.”

“Is that why you wore black-”

“What?”

“-to show the jury you were in mourning for Victor Quinones?”

“Are you out of your mind?” said the voice.

Okay, so maybe he’d been mistaken about that. “Sorry,” he said.

The voice said nothing.

“Anyway,” he told it, “if it’s Monday, or was Monday, that means there’s no night court tonight. Or last night.”

“Great.” The voice was back. “So what do we do?”

“We start,” he said, “by playing with the buttons.”

He found them quickly enough simply by running his hands across the front panels of the elevator. But no matter how he pushed or pulled them, or in what order or combination, none of them did anything. With some additional groping, he located the slit for the override key and spent twenty minutes trying to turn it with one of his keys or pick it with a paper clip. Eventually the end of the paper clip broke off, sticking in the slit and making further attempts impossible. He spent twenty more minutes unsuccessfully trying to find a release mechanism for the door, and another ten assuring himself that there was no emergency phone anywhere in the elevator.

“I give up,” he said.

“It’s getting hot in here,” Darcy said.

She was right. The elevator’s air-conditioning had obviously gone off when the lights and power had. And it was the middle of May, after all, and the past few Mays, present month included, had been pretty much holding their own in the global-warming sweepstakes. Jaywalker thought about commenting on Darcy’s decision to wear a long skirt but decided against it. He’d taken off his jacket, loosened his tie and turned up his shirtsleeves even before he’d played Find the Button. Then again, he tended to do those things as soon as he was out of the courtroom.

But yes, it was getting hot.

“How long can we last in here?” Darcy asked.

“Oh, at least another five minutes.”

“I’m serious.” And she sounded it.

“Longer than you’d think,” said Jaywalker.